Trash Sex Magic

“This just absolutely rocks. It’s lyrical, it’s weird and it’s sexy in a very funky way. Trash Sex Magic is full of  people you would maybe be afraid to meet in real life, but once you’ve met them fictionally you are damn sorry you can’t at least have a beer with them.”

—Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife

Jennifer Stevenson’s debut novel starts with Raedawn Somershoe who lives in a trailer on the banks of the Fox River. She likes men and men like her. It runs in the family: her mother, Gelia, can seduce a man just by walking across a road. When they set their sights on a man, something magical happens.

Alexander Caebeau drives a bucketloader for a construction company. He’s lonely, homesick, tired of cutting down trees and putting up ugly buildings. He dreams of going back to the Bahamas, but when Alexander meets Raedawn Somershoe, something magical happens.

Raedawn has just lost her lover. Her mother is keeping secrets from her. Her childhood sweetheart has come home and is looking for answers. Riverfront developers want Rae and her family gone. She may just be falling in love with Alexander Caebeau. And the Fox River is beginning to rise. . . . Something magical is about to happen.

“Engaging … deeply charming, and its best scenes lodge in the reader’s memory.” - Washington Post

“Weird in the best possible way.” - Margo Lanagan

“It’s not often you get characters like those that appear in Jennifer Stevenson’s Trash Sex Magic. Even if you remove the oddities like the underground huts and the tree fucking, Stevenson presents men and women who feel entirely new to literature, and they’re so good you have to wonder why they’ve been missing…. It’s so refreshing to read a fantasy book that doesn’t read like it bows down to Tolkien, a book with a message that doesn’t sound preachy. Trash Sex Magic is Stevenson’s first novel, and it will be exciting to see what she comes up with next.” - Bookslut

“Jennifer Stevenson’s raunchy, funny, and disturbing first novel, Trash Sex Magic, is full of bewitching weirdness.” -Chicago Reader

“Wonderful…. Trash Sex Magic can sweep you up and leave up dazzled, miles from home.” -Locus

“Stevenson’s first novel is at once sexy, beautifully written and passing strange.” -Publishers Weekly

“Jennifer Stevenson’s sparkling wit comes through in wordplay and metaphor, and her insight and unwavering attention to detail creates a prose as marvelous as the plot while celebrating Gaia and the passionate and transcendental energy of Eros, and it does so with a profound honesty. Imagine Anne Rice with a sense of humor, or a Christopher Moore novel re-written by Anais Nin. If you are looking for a multi-layered treatise on Goddess archetypes, if you’re looking for a fantasy that isn’t quite dark, isn’t quite urban, or if you’re just looking for a funny, well-written trashy novel, this book is definitely for you. Surreal, and full of delightful weirdness, this has quickly become my most-recommended book of the year.” - Green Man Review

Advance Praise: “It’s to Chicago what The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is to Pittsburgh and A Winter’s Tale is to New York — a winning, touching, open-eyed love letter — but with trash, sex, and magic too. Unusual and wonderfully done.” -John Crowley, Little, Big

“It was a proverb of the 16th Century: On Hallowmass Eve troll notte thy broomstick bye ye caravan park, for thou wottist notte who maye mount thereon. I had paid it little heed since learning it years ago, and planned to read this grand book one chapter at a time. I’d scarcely begun the second when I fell under the author’s spell.” -Gene Wolfe, The Knight “Ambitious, phantasmagorical, with images that burn into your brain and stay there, even when the book is off in a corner somewhere minding its own business.” -Ellen Kushner, Swordspoint

“Jennifer Stevenson is my goddess. In this book, trash is power. Trash Sex Magic is a springtime bacchanalia of beautiful, wild women, magic trees and sexy men — love it!” — Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads